Abstract. QoS-aware distributed applications such as
certain Multimedia and Ubiquitous Computing applications can
benefit greatly from the provision of QoS guarantees from the
underlying system and middleware infrastructure. They must avoid
execution glitches that could affect the user's perception of
the application output.
Most research in QoS support for distributed systems relates
to three aspects of QoS management: admission control, resource
reservation, and scheduling. However, in highly dynamic distributed
environments, effective means for QoS negotiation and re-negotiation
are also essential.
We believe that mobile agents, due to its inherent flexibility
and agility, can play an important role in this scenario, specially
during the application adaptation process. We designed a mobile-agent-based
infrastructure that provides services such as resource monitoring,
QoS brokering, and QoS enforcement. Furthermore, our infrastructure
offers a powerful mechanism for QoS negotiation. Our goal is
to unburden the application from the complex process of QoS
negotiation and reservation, thus reducing the complexity of
building QoS-aware distributed applications.